Defiant conservatives still fighting Trump's health bill

Tuesday

Mar 14, 2017 at 5:30 PMMar 14, 2017 at 5:30 PM

Undaunted by fellow Republicans' defiance, GOP leaders and the White House redoubled their efforts Tuesday to muscle legislation overhauling America's health care system through Congress following a sobering report about millions being shoved off insurance coverage.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Undaunted by fellow Republicans' defiance, GOP leaders and the White House redoubled their efforts Tuesday to muscle legislation overhauling America's health care system through Congress following a sobering report about millions being shoved off insurance coverage.

President Donald Trump, whose strong Election Day showing in GOP regions makes him the party's ultimate Capitol Hill vote wrangler, discussed the legislation by phone with Congress' two top Republicans. He also dispatched Vice President Mike Pence and health secretary Tom Price to hear GOP senators' concerns.

With a crucial House committee voted slated for Thursday, Trump's spokesman acknowledged they were open to making changes to win support.

"This has never been a take it or leave it," said Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

The GOP bill is the party's response to seven years of promising to repeal President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul. It would undo that law's individual mandate, which requires most people to have coverage, by ending the tax penalty on those who don't.

It would also provide age-based tax credits instead of the subsidies geared to income in Obama's statute, end that law's expansion of Medicaid and curb its future spending, and let insurers boost rates for seniors.

On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office said the Republican legislation would reduce the ranks of the insured by 24 million in a decade, largely by cutting Medicaid recipients and people buying individual policies. That would be more than the 20 million who've gained coverage under Obama's overhaul — and attach a big number to a problem haunting GOP governors and members of Congress whose states have benefited from "Obamacare."

The budget office report also said the measure would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the next decade, largely by cutting Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, and eliminating Obama's subsidies for low- and middle-income people. The report said that the bill's changes would result in federal subsidies that would fall to half their current size in a decade and that older, lower-earning people would be hit especially hard.

Those findings further energized Democrats, who already were unanimously opposing the GOP repeal effort and showing no sign of relenting.

"Of course you can have savings if you cut off millions of people from access to health care," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She said the measure's shift of billions of dollars from lower- to higher-earning families actually would effectively transfer money from GOP to Democratic regions, and, seemingly taunting Republicans, she added, "Explain that to your constituents.

No. 3 Senate leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he was working on a proposal to devote more of the GOP tax cut to lower-earning people. It would currently begin phasing out for people earning $75,000 annually.

"It'd be nice to add it to the House bill, but if necessary it'd be in the Senate," Thune said of his plan.